Moonbox

Where's JDOBBIN? Still...more spending...more stimulus demands from the Liberals. Clearly this means they are the more responsible fiscal managers.......

They're not going to suffer from it. If they go from owning 5% of the Montreal and gay vote to 1% of the Montreal Gay Vote, it won't make any difference. The only people crying about this are people that already don't like the Tories and thus it really makes no difference to them. It's not a 'right' to get funding from the government for a minority celebration. It's not 'fair' that I would pay taxes in Ontario to support gay tourism in Montreal when an already disproportionate amount of my tax dollars go towards Quebec. As I said before, if $150,000 is going to make or break a festival in city of millions, then the festival isn't a success. If it was such a boon to tourism the community would sponsor it and the city would support it. If private enterprise (as people are saying here) are going to benefit hugely from it, they'd come up with the difference themselves. It's VERY BASIC math here. If '$G' investment returns '$G x 5' after the festival, people would support it. It shouldn't need to be subsidized. You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. I'm pro-gay in pretty much every way possible. I'm happy with gay marriage, I'm happy with gay clergy and I've several gay friends and good clients. I'm just not crying that Harper made a political decision to not spend money where it will do his party no good. Once again, you can naively assume that polticians shouldn't and don't do this, but the reality is that the general populace doesn't care what's fair and cares more for what's good for 'them'. This is how politicians gain votes and a politician that doesn't realize this soon finds himself kicked on the curb.

It doesn't have to be xenophobic. If someone can't speak good english and contribute when they get here, we shouldn't let them in. It's not a RIGHT for a non-Canadian to live here. It's a priviledge and we can be as choosy as we like. I don't agree with profiling on religion or ethnicity, but if you don't speak the language and don't have any transferrable skills, NOTHANKSBYE!

Here's a really intelligent statement. You'd rather have a man whose made it his mission to fight for the enemies of Canada as your neighbour than an upset woman who got frustrated with Canadian Health Care when she had a brain tumor? I'm embarrassed you and I live in the same town with a statement like that. I hope you don't live in the South End.

A fifteen year old is mature enough to know exactly what he's doing lobbing grenades and building/placing IEDs. Regardless of what led him to do it, he'll never be a productive Canadian and he and his family clearly don't want to BE Canadian. Go riddance to them and if they let him out of Gitmo I hope they put holes in his boat.

Like I've said MANY times already, if you have a BUDGETED amount of money to give away for events then you have to chose which ones are more worthy than others. There are likely more qualified events than there is funding. INVARIABLY this will boil down to a political decision and it's not at all remarkable to me that the Tories chose not to throw money down the toilet at a group of people that almost certainly won't vote for them regardless of what happens and especially on an area that pretty much ALWAYS votes Liberal. When you guys are saying a government should be for 'all' the people of Canada that's really naive. If politicians don't play politics then they don't get re-elected. It's as simple as that. You can whine and cry about it all you want, but if the Tories spent limited funds on people and areas that no matter what won't vote for them, and at the same time this angered the people that actually do vote for them, you can rest assured they'd go down in flames in the next election. All the power in the world to you if you want to keep believing that the government should be trying to deal fairly with every single individual in the country. It's not going to happen and it's never been the case.

Are jobs leading or laggin indicators of the direction of an economy?

Khadr was a brainwashed and angry kid fighting against our allies and their soldiers. He's no friend of Canada and is not likely to ever become one. Keep him out.

Nothing special. You're not alone. Too bad for you you're not the majority.

Governments are always for their constituents. You can never please everyone, so you please as many (net) people you can. If you don't do this then you're no longer the government. You're an election failure wishing you'd have been more realistic and pragmatic.

The festival either succeeds or doesn't on its own. If the restaurants etc make so much extra money, they would be lining up to sponsor the events. They would also bank the proceeds to make sure they had money for next year. A subsidy, by its very definition, means that's not what's happening. It's the way this crap has been done forever. The fact is that even if you set up criteria you still have to make decisions because there are often too many applicants that meet that criteria. In this event you make choices. A gay event in Montreal does is money out the window as far as the Tories are concerned and on top of that it makes a lot of constituents in the west unhappy. If someone hates me, I normally don't give them money either. Realistically, politicians have pleasing as many people as possible as their main objective. They want to increase their consituency and make sure they have votes come the next election. Put naivety aside acknowledge this fact and you can come to a pretty simple solution. "Hmm...nobody in Montreal votes Conservative. Gays don't vote Conservative. A lot of people who do or WOULD vote Conservative are either indifferent or openly hostile to funding gay festivals in Montreal.....Hmmm....Hmm....what on Earth should we do? Hmmm...."

I'd go along with no funding at all for cultural events, save perhaps things like Canada Day. Aside from that the Industry Minister said that Quebec had already received a big portion of culture funding and that there were more worthy events. As far as this is concerned, I once again acknowledge that this was possibly a political decision. Even with the criteria established, you have to chose some events over others. You get a budget, you get too many applicants that qualify and some have to be dropped. It's a lot easier for Tories to drop events that anger a lot of their constituents than it is for something a lot less political.

Read about it a little bit and I'm sure you can come up with some conclusions. The NEP murdered federal Liberal support in Alberta for 40 years and it's never recovered. It WAS that bad.

This really shouldn't even be up for debate as far as I'm concerned. If people as it stands can't bother themselves to spend an hour or so voting in a Federal election, then clearly they can't be bothered to inform themselves of the issues and hence will make a stupid and uninformed decision. We're better off without these idiots voting anyways.

If anything this inflates Liberal numbers. NDP and Bloc voters will say Liberal before PC. No offense btw, but you've had 'a real base and room to grow' for as long as I've been alive and nothing has been done with it. The problem is you need policies that the majority of Canadians would support.

I think Ignatieff lost his chance to define himself. It's been about 8 months and we know next to nothing about what he'd do. Canadians, it seems to me, are less interested than before and all the while he's been labelled by the PC in attack ads.

Treason.

Hey I don't disagree with anything you really said here. He's doing what the Liberals did and he criticized them for. I just think he's being pragmatic about it. As far as POLITICS go, if I was Stephen Harper I'd also be avoiding spending large sums of money in areas that were political wastelands for me. Why bother? It's not like he has to worry about the gay Montreal vote. Montreal and Toronto have been on Liberal lockdown for 20 years now and that's not likely to change. Harper may have previously hoped it would and spent money there in order to foster the impression that we was a fair spender, but fair spending (and he did spend a ton of money in Quebec) clearly makes no difference to a Quebec voter because arts funding is clearly a lot more important. There's no point in throwing money down the toilet. Once again, however, you've avoided my question as to why would the Tories spend money there? Other than the 'criteria'....

Well years ago he was convinced to go to Afghanistan and work with the Taliban. Perhaps he wasn't LEGALLY an adult in Canada yet, but he was old enough to work to fight against us. How stupid do you have to be to assume that when we repatriate him he'll want to be a productive part of Canadian society? Omar Khadr and his family are the best example we have of terrible immigration and citizenship laws. I really, completely and honestly could not care less what happens to him. If he gets out of Gitmo, however, I don't want him back in Canada.

Pretty much the stupidest thing ever said on this forum. I laugh at you, and your family if they are anything like you. I'm not afraid of rabid idiots on welfare. Yep hate is a lot easier to spread for sure. It's also a lot easier to propogate hate in a majority against a minority than it is the other way around. It's a pretty counter-productive initiative for the minority.

You can be offended all you like. You find a way to get offended about pretty much everything the Tories do. The Tories have to ask themselves, "Why would we spend this money? What good does it do us as a party, and for that matter the average voter/taxpayer?" I'd love to see you try and come up with an intelligent answer to that, other than that the festival met the ''criteria''.

It's easier to justify funding some events over others. Canada Day celebrations are something everyone can enjoy. A celebration flaunting homosexuality, often distastefully, is something that's going to be VERY hard for a lot of Canadians to want to support with dollars from their pockets. Of course there's politics involved with this sort of thing. There always is. What's your point? The Tories aren't out there actively attacking gays, they've just made it clear there's better things to do with money in a recession than throw it away at stupid 'parties' that the vast majority of the residents wants absolutely NOTHING to do with. I have nothing wrong with homosexuality or anything of the like, but I do find it offensive that I'm paying taxes to subsidize their partying.

The Tories funded it in the past...so probably not.

I hope I wasn't misunderstood. I don't mean they shouldn't have funded it because they are anti-gay or anything like that. I don't think ANY funding should be provided for this crap. If the event is worthwhile it will proceed without it. Subsidizing special interest groups/cultures is never worthwhile IMO. When you combine this with the fact that the Tories have NOTHING to gain by supporting it you really have your answer for why it was cancelled.

Why waste taxpayers money for an event in Montreal? Some events are more worthy of others and I'm not saying a Gay festival is less worthy, but why on earth would the Tories waste money on: A) A province that's a political wasteland for them A demographic that's also lost to them It would be like the Liberals throwing millions towards funding Baptist Church events in Alberta.